Syberia: Down the Tunnel of Dreams
by Hakluyt
Summary: Kate Walker has returned from Syberia, but what does life hold for her from now on? Gathering allies she made along the way, Kate goes on a new voyage, racing enemies and learning hard lessons to decide what it will all mean for her. Continuation of the adventure game Syberia II by Benoît Sokal. Expansion of my one-shot "Letters Home."
1. Return from Syberia

_Author's Note: This fic grew out of ideas developed after I played Syberia I and II, but before Syberia 3 was released, and happens before that game's timeframe. As such, Syberia 3 has little bearing on events herein._

It was the stillness that woke Kate Walker. Weighed down by exhaustion, hunger and something akin to grief, she'd slept an unknown time in the bunk aboard the Youkol Mammoth Ark. As soon as she'd gone back aboard in Syberia Island, the ship had, with no prompting, gotten underway again. Youki's warmth slumped overtop of her like a heavy blanket. Together, they were rocked gently by the sea as they sailed on.

But now the rocking had stopped, and she woke to stillness and a splitting headache and throat raw with thirst. She reached up and shook the dog-creature lying on top of her.

"Wake up Youki," she croaked. The animal stirred, looked up and blinked sleepily before stumbling off of her.

Despite still being in her warm clothes, losing Youki's heat made her shiver and she had to make a profound effort in order to get up the ladder to the deck.

"Kate Walker! Kate Walker returns!"

Kate blinked in the glare of firelight. A short, stocky figure in furs stood by the hatch, holding a torch.

The Youkol village, Kate realized. She was back.

"You okay, Kate Walker?"

"I...we made it," said said, stumbling up onto the deck. "We reached Syberia, we did it."

When she woke up again, she was back in the bedroom she'd been given the first time she'd arrived in the Youkol village. With Hans, and Oscar.

Her cold-weather clothes were folded up on the foot of the bed. As she sat up, the door opened and two Youkols entered. One was carrying a bowl, and the other was the Spirit Woman who had helped Kate help Hans get to the end of the quest.

"So, Kate Walker," she croaked, staring at her in that particular way that made her feel transparent, "apparently there is a way back up the Dream Tunnel, eh?"

Kate swallowed, and nodded.

"Good," the Spirit Woman said, nodding. "Hans would not have made it without you."

"But...but he's gone," Kate said, "He was so happy, but he didn't come back. I couldn't do anything but get back on the ship."

"He reached the end of his Dream Tunnel," the crone said, coming up and looking seriously at Kate now. "That is what he wanted. You wanted to come back."

"Yes," Kate said, and stopped short. The other Youkol put the bowl in her lap. It consisted of what looked like steaming, cooked seaweed and what looked - and smelled - like smoked fish.

"You know that Syberia is real, Kate Walker. Now what do you wish to know?"

Kate's stomach growled ferociously at the sight of the food.

"I...I need to know what I'm going to do next," Kate said. She felt herself choke up and her vision blurred. The quest for Syberia was done, and now the thrill, the all-consuming wonder of the adventure was at an end. And as two dimensional as her old life seemed, it also seemed terribly far away.

"Next, you are going to eat, and get strong again, Kate Walker," the Spirit Woman said kindly.

Kate sniffed a little laugh, thanked the Youkols, and dug in.


	2. Black Shadows

Springtime was coming to the Arctic. When Kate stirred out of her quarters at last, she felt a mild air moving throught the icy cavern. She climbed up to the last tracks of Hans' clockwork train, and was astonished to see grass starting to peek through the snow.

"Kate Walker?"

Kate jumped and turned around. The Youkol Chief stood there, looking up at her.

"You are thinking about going back," he remarked.

"I am," she admitted. "The adventure's over."

"One adventure," the Chief pointed out.

Kate looked longingly at the clockwork train, sitting idle on the elevated platform down below her in the ice cave.

"Train not work anymore," said the Chief.

"No, I suppose not. Even if it did, I'd probably drive it off a cliff! I hope it isn't in your way?"

"No," he said. "Hans built always with kindness."

Kate's vision blurred again, "Yes. Yes he did." She regained her composure and went on, "Chief," she said softly, "Thank you so much for your hospitality. I've been such an imposition for you. Is there anything I can do to make myself useful?"

"Kate Walker, you have released the Mammoth Ark, you have shown the Youkols mammoths still live! You have done much for Youkols!"

"I...you mean you didn't..." And then Kate remembered something she'd read, "Yes, it used to come and go regularly didn't it?"

"Once, long ago," the Chief said somlemnly.

Memories began stringing themselves together in her mind, "When we arrived on Syberia, I found a...a body. Someone who'd been looking out to sea, and they'd died that way."

"One of Youkol ancestors," the Chief said, looking at Kate in amazement. "Those who went on the Ark thousands of years ago!"

"I guess so. And I found other things: writing on stones, and machinery just like some of the things you have here. Like Hans' machines but made of wood and bone, and ancient. I almost think Hans was meant to be born a Youkol!"

The happiness that suffused the Chief's face almost made him glow. "Thank you for telling me these things, Kate Walker."

"Are you going to put a crew aboard the Ark and send them to Syberia," Kate asked, "start it up again?"

The Chief's expression was noticeably eager, but his words were more restrained, "Not sure, Kate Walker. Such a long time since our people walked with mammoths. Spirit Woman is concerned."

"Is she?" Kate asked, surprised.

"Dangerous journey, to find out will of first Youkols, from mammoth age. Must travel far, far down Tunnel of Dreams."

Kate shivered. The last time she'd made that journey, it had been the strangest experience of her life, and had left her feeling sick, dizzy, and it had cost her Oscar.

"I wish I could help with..."

Kate's swirling memory suddenly froze around a new stimulus: a sound, a birdsong. She's heard it once before, and it seemed important. Not the hoot of the harfang, something else. Merula...something.

"Merula alba," she breathed, "the white raven!" Her eyes snapped up the horizon. In amongst the sparse, scrawny trees, shapes stood out: figures in furs, and some others, in black robes!

"Chief, we've got to get back..." Kate began, and then a crack rang out, and a puff of snow spat up from the ground a few yards in front of them. Kate didn't know much about guns, but she'd lived in New York long enough to know what was happening. Without thinking, she grabbed the much shorter man by the sleeve and half-dragged him back down into the Youkol cave-village.

The chief regained his balance and shouted something, and drums began thundering around the cavern.

"Men with guns, took-took met-al!"

Kate's heart pounded as well. She asked, "I don't suppose you have any guns, do you?"

"Guns the weapon of Soviet, of Czar," the Chief said, apparently not overly flustered by Kate's manhandling him. "None in Youkol Village."

"Sorry," Kate said sincerely. She pointed at the great sloped doorway the clockwork train had entered the cavern through. "Can that be closed?"

"Not fast enough," the Chief said. "Hans repair it for us, said go slow, or break it."

Kate looked around wildly, seeing people, some taking up spears, hammers or other weapons that looked frankly pathetic in the face of rifles, and others were looking hurriedly around for loved ones. Kate saw that, and her heart seemed to blaze. She sprinted for the train.

Climbing up onto the immense wood and bone platform it was parked on, she sprang to the controls, and tried to remember the sequence she'd used to free the Mammoth Ark from the ice.

She glanced over her shoulder, through the back of the train's cab, and saw shapes silhoutted in the cave entrance. And she recognized one of them. The dark robe, swirling around below a tall hat. It couldn't be!

Hurriedly, she worked the controls, trying to remember the exact timing she wanted. First, the coal intake, right?

A long, articulated pipe snaked out over her head from the front of the train, its bird-shaped head opening its mouth to suck up coal from the car behind. But she kept working the control back and forth, making the bird head halt, rear up and then lunge toward the coal again. She cursed the fact that the boiler was cold, maybe she could have found a way to shoot steam at the attackers. But then again, the bird-head was coughing a good deal of coal smut into a cloud above the train. Now, she seized the speed control and threw the train into reverse.

The train lurched backward, the bird head still flailing as it advanced on the attackers. Kate curled up on the footplate as the rapid clangs of bullet ricochets peppered the train. Glass shattered as bullets hit the gauges on the controls. Then the firing subsided, and she heard voices shouting in both Youkol and Russian. Kate took a chance to glance out of the side door, and saw she was coming up the tracks again, and icy rubble was level with the train wheels again. She seized her chance and jumped. Chunks of ice slammed into various parts of her, and she tumbled off onto the smooth pathway up the side of the cave, and she looked up toward the daylight, and nearly cheered.

The platform behind the train, where the massive winch had been set up to pull the train inside, was crowded with Youkols. In the distraction they must have made it up there, and now they were launching slingshot pellets and lobbing spears or darts, while the intruding figures scattered before the lumbering train, waving their arms in the clouds of coal dust.

Kate jumped as she felt something nudge her, and turned to find Youki pawing at her. She gave his ears a reassuring ruffle and got shakily to her feet and headed to the platform.

All the Youkols were looking out with expressions of satisfaction or of relief. Kate looked out over the snowscape outside. Figures were scattering to the horizon, some of them hunched or limping.

"The Patriarch," Kate whispered.


	3. Backtracking

"I need to leave," Kate said. She was sitting in her quarters in the Youkol village on a polar bear skin rug, with the Spirit Woman and the Chief. "I recognized one of those men. The Patriarch of Romansbourg monastery."

The Spirit Woman made a hissing sound. The Chief shuddered. "Men like that have come to the Youkols before. Tried to tell us we were full of sin and evil. Because we live as we have since before their god was killed and rose again. Before the commissars came and said we were in a revolution we knew nothing about."

Kate shivered. She knew just enough about the Soviet Union to find that unsettling. And what she'd learned about the Youkols from Professor Pons at Barraockstadt and from Brother Alexei's book at Romansbourg were painfully instructive as well.

"I got Hans away from him before we made it here," Kate said. "I think he came after me. I need to get away from here, find out what's going on. After everything I've done, I can't let it be undone!"

The Chief sighed deeply, Kate's sudden intensity seemingly catching him off guard, and nodded. "Long way to go."

"I don't imagine you've got a vehicle somewhere?"

"Snow has not melted yet. Youki sleds can take you."

Kate smiled, but said, "That would be amazing...but I don't know if I can drive a Youki-pulled sled!"

"You understand, Kate Walker," the Spirit Woman said, nodding and smiling that gap-toothed, knowing smile.

Kate's eyes widened, "You're coming with me?"

"I am," Spirit Woman said, nodding respectfully to the Chief. "Mammoth Ark returns. Must find place of oldest ancestors and seek their guidance."

"Where's that?" Kate asked.

"Don't know," she said, shrugging. "Must look for signs. Kate Walker walked with Hans, walks with harfang. Probably good to walk with her, yes?"

Kate laughed, feeling almost bashful. "Well, if I can help, I will. But I really do need to get back to civ..." She cut off. What an unkind thing to say. "I need to get back the way I came. And I don't want to bring any more harm onto your community."

"Kate Walker is kind, like Hans," the Chief said. "Travel safely. Come back one day and say hello."

Kate's adopted Youki wasn't trained for sleigh-pulling, but the Youkols had plenty more that were. They loaded up three driftwood-and-bone sleds. The Spirit Woman rode on one sled, with several parcels of supplies and accoutrements of her station. A second carried Kate and her Youki, and the third was laden with more supplies. Each sled was pulled by four youkis, and they headed off, plunging back into the taiga forest.

Weaving between the increasingly dense trees, following the railway, they saw important signs. The Youkol driving Kate's sled pointed them out to her. A combination of horse dung and the tracks of a snowbike. Kate was amazed at the progress they were making, but wasn't too upset that they didn't catch up with the attackers whose trail they followed.

They camped for a short night's sleep under the shadows of pine trees. Kate huddled with Youki in a lean-to shelter made of reindeer hide. This far north, it was still dark when they got underway again. Kate watched the sun rise between the snow-laden trees, and smiled.

The whole day passed over and it was getting dark again when she finally saw a familiar sight: the broken bridge. She called out for the sleds to stop, and told them where they could go.

It took a half-mile detour to manage it, but they managed to get across the river gorge. By then, it was getting dark, and she was looking anxiously around for that bear that had stopped her here before. A wind was blasting wet snow into her face all the way.

At last, they made it to the old lodge, or chalet or whatever it was, that Kate and Youki and taken shelter in before. Oddly, it didn't seem to cross the Youkol's minds to go into it, and they started setting up their camp on a hillock nearby. Kate, however, couldn't resist the draw of something as familiar as a house. The Youkols offered her some supplies and left her to it.

It was dark inside, and bitterly cold, but at least it was out of the wind. Kate stumbled to the fireplace. There was dry wood stacked to the side, and most of the other neccessaries, and after a few false starts, mostly stemming from her hands shaking in the cold, Kate got a fire started.

"Summer camp had to be good for something," she said to herself, teeth chattering. As the fire built up, Kate found and cleaned out some cookware that had been left in the house, and prepared a supper of salted meat and seaweed from the supplies the Youkols had given her.

As she warmed up, inside and out, Kate's head cleared, and her spirits, paradoxically, sank. She was haunted by the question of 'nowwhat?' She didn't want the life she'd had before. But that rushing, ennobling sense of purpose was gone with Hans. Hans, who, ill, absentminded and captivated by his success as he was, hadn't even said goodbye... Now she was just baggage for the Youkols, pointing them the way to something she wasn't sure she'd understood.

Soon it was properly dark outside, but the house was warm, if a little humid. There was an old straw mattress in one corner, and she pulled it closer to the fire, collapsed on it, and Youki collapsed on her legs, and she fell asleep in a moment, and dreamed of mammoths.


	4. Inspiration

Kate didn't know exactly how long she slept, but the morning was well along by the time she woke, revived by a cacophany of bird songs outside. She built up the fire and ate. And then, looking around at the place, she hunted around until she found an old fruit crate, or something like it, in a cupboard. Leaving Youki asleep by the fireplace, she headed outside.

Outside, melting snow was dripping off the trees so fast it might as well have been rain. The sun was out and warm, though the air was still cold. She waved good morning to the Youkols, who appeared to be resting and doing maintenance on their sleds. Kate made her way over to the wreck of the railway bridge.

With the ice in retreat, it was not as difficult as she'd feared to climb down from the collapsed rail bridge to the river below, in which lay the wreck of the berth car, abandoned in crisis to let her and Oscar pursue Hans and his kidnappers. It lay smashed on its side, half in the water.

Kate had to fight back tears. The sumptuous little car had begun to feel like home. She'd almost gotten used to the idea of continuing to travel on it for...for however long. Forever?

Gingerly, she climbed through one of the shattered windows. Cogs, springs and tools that Hans had filled the berth with lay scattered everywhere, along with the fine furnishings and decorations, all broken and splintered. She searched through the wreckage for hours, and to her enormous relief, she found what she'd been seeking.

She got back into the lodge with the box full of such things in one arm. In her other hand, she carried another fortunate discovery: her suitcase, which she'd left behind with the berthing car.

Back in the chalet, she put the box on the table. Then, she tried to put off looking at them by tidying up, clearing out the most obvious cobwebs, straightening the furntiure, cleaning the dishes she'd used. Only later, despondently, did she lay the box's contents out on the table. She had the music box and the drums that played snippets relating the history between Hans and his late sister, Anna Voralberg, and an assortment of Voralberg keys. She had the precious little mammoth doll with its tiny human rider from the cave in Valadilene. That, she realized, was the beginning to this whole thing. She'd also found something she'd forgotten about: the little clockwork mammoth Hans had given her when they first met! Amongst all these things, she particularly admired the Youkol mammoth lamp or goblet she'd burned a herbal candle in to restore Hans in Romansbourg monastery.

What else did she have? She took the opportunity to go through her coat and trouser pockets. She pulled a few pieces of the unique grass from Syberia Island out of her clothing. And she had the Youkol medallion that had allowed her to summon the mammoths for Hans. She had the journal of the monk, Alexei Toukianov, who had written his account of the Youkols and their traditions and knowledge. She had books she'd acquired, letters from Anna Voralberg and people connected to her. She had the letter slipped to her by the other monk about Alexei, the narwhal tusk she'd picked up in the Arctic ice, when the thief Ivan Bourgoff had tried to seize the Mammoth Ark. And there was the Spirit Mask that Oscar - wonderful, exasperating, unique Oscar - had worn to ease the fears of the Youkols.

And, she realized a little guiltily, she had the paperwork for the sale of the Voralberg factory in Valadilene. She was almost tempted to burn it, but there was no point. The Voralbergs were gone. Oscar was gone and the train was lost. Anna was gone and Hans had found Syberia. The factory had done all that it needed.

Hans' story was at an end, and almost nobody but Kate knew about it. How could such a secret victory be worth it? Despite having faced spirits, automatons, and living prehistory, she felt the urge for something more. All she was left with was a stack of odds and ends that looked like a half-baked museum...

...exhibit.

Kate stared at the wall for a moment. She'd wanted to give this adventure some meaning, or closure. But she'd known most people wouldn't understand or believe what had drawn her to Hans and his quest. She couldn't see a way of telling anyone, back in New York or anywhere.

An idea began coalescing in her mind. She went dazedly out onto the dock on the back of the house and took up the fishing gear there, to give Youki something to fill him up.

She stared at the water as the idea started to form. Her heart fluttered in anxiety that it wouldn't work.

Then she heard a rustling and looked up. The harfang, the owl the Youkols thought so highly of, was sitting there!

Kate wondered if they were common out here. She'd seen a few. Unless, of course, it was the same one, following her. She felt increasingly unable to assume anything.

The harfang hooted, and seemed to startle, and Kate's eye caught something else. Her eye flicked down to the forest across the river. Something moved.

Kate froze. A flash of black moved between the trees. It was a hooded figure, she realized. One of the monks from the Romansbourg monastery? Maybe the odd birdwatching monk who had slipped her a letter about Alexei's journal. But maybe one working for the old Patriarch.

She managed to catch one of the ugly violet salmon for Youki, and then went to the Spirit Woman and her entourage.

"I think I should go on ahead to Romansbourg," she said, "Make sure it's safe. Will you be alright here in the meantime?"

"We will be fine, Kate Walker," the old woman said gently. "Bring news when you have it."


	5. Conversations in Romansbourg

The gangcar she'd used to chase Ivan and Igor Bourgoff and the stolen train was still there, and Youki, though tired, was eager to run in the driving wheel again.

To her alarm, it was getting dark yet again by the time she and Youki made the journey. Despite that, Romansbourg sounded much louder and livelier than the last time she'd been there. The mild weather seemed to enervate the people, and the general store had several other people in it.

Colonel Emeliov, the shopkeeper, was arguing with someone at the counter. And, suddenly, she recognized the other man. It was Boris Charnov, the old test pilot. They were arguing about something to do with spare parts. But when Emeliov spotted her, his eyes widened, his jaw dropped, and Boris turned to see what he was looking at, and then they both looked as if a ghost had just walked in.

"Comrade Kate," the scruffy old test pilot exclaimed.

"Dear lady," Emeliov breathed, "We had given up all hope of seeing you! It has been weeks since you left us!"

Kate was astounded. She'd lost all sense of time since the race to reach the Youkols and then, finally, Syberia...

"You look like you've been through hell and back again," Boris exclaimed.

"I'm glad you made it here, Boris," said Kate, smiling. "Is your flying wing..."

"A write-off, I'm afraid," said Boris with a throwing up of his hands. "No hope. But there's plenty of good salvage to be had!"

"It is only a question of whether it is useful in any other context," Emeliov said pointedly, "But never mind all that! Miss Walker, what befell you?"

"Yeah, and where's Hans?" Boris added.

"That," Kate said, feeling weary again, "is a very long story indeed."

Emeliov closed the shop then and there, and the three of them went down into the town to Mr. Cirkos' bar. As they walked down, taking it slowly on account of Emeliov's leg, several of the townspeople looked at them in amazement, or, for some reason, alarm and suspicion. One who shot a particularly dirty look was treated to a fierce string of Russian invective from the Colonel.

"Is there something wrong?" Kate asked warily.

"That, too," said the Colonel darkly, "Is a long story."

They went to Cirkos' bar, and the burly impresario made a thunderous exclamation when Kate walked in.

"Our noble adventuress has returned from reaches unknown! Come in, come in!"

They ended up sitting around a table. Cirkos poured out glasses of plum brandy. Kate was pleased, however, to note that Boris turned down the liquor in favour of lemonade. There was a spark in his eyes ever since that day in Komkolzgrad that they'd gotten his piloting dreams off the ground - literally. He also poured a glass of the brandy over a slab of roast pork and put it in a dish on the floor for Youki.

They drank their drinks and Kate told them some - not all, but some - of what had happened. Even keeping the details minimal, she'd been unable to hold back tears when she told them that Hans had accomplished his quest, with the sacrifice of Oscar to see them on their way. She'd also told them of what happened to the villainous Ivan.

"Curse that conniving, money-grubbing dog," Cirkos cried, slamming his glass on the table.

"Fit fate for an enemy of the people," Boris said, glaring at his lemonade.

"Have that junkyard of his torn to the ground," Col. Emeliov opined.

"I'll have Igor out on his ear," Cirkos agreed.

"Is he back?" asked Kate, surprised.

"I think so," Cirkos said, "There're snowmobile tracks and the gate's locked again."

"Don't be harsh to him," Kate said, "He's as much a victim of Ivan as anyone. Ivan left him lost in the wilderness. It's only a mercy he found his way back at all!"

Cirkos frowned at her, then his expression softened. "Quite right, Miss Walker. Hans was a kind man, and wouldn't appreciate revenge on his behalf."

And then Kate had said, "It breaks my heart to say it, but the train's a write-off too. Even if the Youkols or I knew how to run it, it doesn't seem like anyone's about to repair the bridge, and the machinery's unwound and ice cold."

Boris brigthened up, "but I could probably salvage some useful parts from it! Enough to get us off the ground. I mean, I don't quite know where you'd want to go, but..."

Kate had said she'd think about it. Then, after a moment's pause, Cirkos raised his glass and said, "To Hans Voralberg!"

"Hans!" Boris concurred.

"Hans," agreed Col. Emeliov.

"Hans," Kate said softly, "And Syberia."

"So, Miss Walker," said Cirkos, "What do you intend to do next?"

Fresh excitement and anxiety rose in Kate at the question. "I'm not sure. I have an idea, but I have to let the Youkols know what's happening. They're waiting for me at that old chalet near the railroad bridge." She looked at Cirkos and Emeliov, "Do you know if it belongs to anyone?"

"Regrettably not," Emeliov said glumly. "It used to belong to the town governor, but he retired years back. It's abandoned."

"Well, at least I don't have to worry about trespassing," Kate said dryly. "That's fine then. I think my next stop - our next stop, me and the Youkols - will probably have to be Barrockstadt. Which reminds me," she turned to Emeliov, "I need to write and post some letters. Do you take American cash?"

Amazing what a few greenbacks could accomplish, even out here.


	6. Letters Home

Cirkos let her have the use of a private parlour in his bar. She used the time while the materials were brought to make one last call on her cellphone before its carefully-rationed battery finally gave up. Then she laid out a sheet of paper, and beside it, the Voralberg contract, and wrote:

 _To Mr. Edward Marson,_

 _Please find enclosed the paperwork for the sale of the Voralberg factory. I think you will find everything in order._

She debated saying something about being sorry for the delay, but no explanation she could think of really explained anything, so she didn't bother.

Instead, she wrote:

 _Unfortunately, at the same time I must give notice of my resignation from the firm of Marson and Lormont, effective immediately. I am proud to have earned a place of respect at such an excellent company, however my experience in the Voralberg affair has made me realize that it is time for a change._

 _Yours Most Sincerely,_

 _Kate Walker, Esq._

There, she thought. She'd done it. She'd tried, at first, to fight the realization, but from a buttoned-down professional living in the big city, she'd become someone for whom the big city wasn't big enough. Not when there was a whole world to explore, so much she'd never imagined...

She sighed, and pulled up another sheet of paper.

 _Dear Mom,_

 _I hope you got my message; my phone's pretty nearly out of juice. I wanted to let you know that I'm fine. Well, I don't know if 'fine' is really the word, but I'm not hurt and I've had the most incredible adventure! I want to make something of it, but I need to lay some groundwork before I do. I know it'll be tough to understand, but once I chase this down I'll have a chance to explain._

 _Yours with love,_

 _Kate_

Then, her heart speeding up again, she pulled up one sheet more:

 _To Professor Cornelius Pons, Emeritus Professor of Palaeozoology, University of Barrockstadt,_

 _I hope this message finds you well, Professor. I'm hoping to travel to Barrockstadt very soon. A lot has happened since we met and I attended your lecture. I'd like to meet with you about what's best to do with what I've seen and discovered. I'll be in town in a few days, all being well._

 _Yours Sincerely,_

 _Kate Walker_

Back in the main bar, Kate handed over the letters to Emeliov, who went back to his store to sort out postage. Then she asked, "Now, Boris, Mr. Cirkos," she nodded to Boris who was there as well, as Emeliov sorted out postage, "What's up with all the funny looks we were getting?"

Cirkos snorted in contempt and said, "For weeks after you left, Kate Walker, the Patriarch kept sending his crows down to ask questions. Wanting to figure out where you went, where you came from, what you were trying to do!"

"And when they're not doing that, they're preaching about wicked women and seeking out knowledge of sin or some medieval nonsense," Boris said. "One of them followed me up and down town when I got here."

Kate's anxiety spiked, "Then it _was_ him who attacked the Youkol village!"

"I fear so," Cirkos said. "Ah, we should have said something sooner, but we were so stunned by your return!"

"It's okay," Kate said, "But I'd better get going sooner rather than later."

She turned to Boris, "What are you going to do now?"

He shrugged, "I've made my flight. There's some machinery and things here that needs more upkeep than it's getting. And I've got some ideas about some stuff I can make." The old pilot smiled. "Little bit of Hans has rubbed off on me."

Kate smiled wanly at that.

Suddenly, her ears twitched at the sound of shouting and commotion. Boris, eyes suddenly blazing, stumped out of the store and headed for the stairs down to the main street of Romansbourg.

They followed the racket to the junkyard run by the late Ivan. The gate was open, surprisingly, and Kate heard quite a commotion coming from inside. As she stepped in, a bizarre sight met her.

A half-dozen black-robed monks were standing in the junkyard shelter area, watching with unfathomable expressions as the dried out old Patriarch virtually engaged in a tug of war over the steering of a snowbike. His opposition was the enormous Igor, and despite the difference in their builds, it was anyone's contest. It had been fairly obvious from the time she met him that the big Russian was developmentally disabled. He was pulling on the handle with a petulant expressions and shouting, "No! It's mine! I drive, and I not driving for you again!"

"You must! You must repent for helping the unholy woman!"

"Don't say that! Nice lady saved me from evil spirits!" 

"Imbecile! You have given in to the illusions of the Devil! God compels you to answer my questions!"

"How would you know what God says," said another voice. A small, fierce voice, and Kate, circling partway around the confrontation, saw a little girl in brightly coloured clothing. Malka, the girl who had helped her when she'd first come to Romansbourg. She shoved the Patriarch with all her might, and he stumbled, and Igor hauled the snowbike's steering away from him. Kate remembered with a pang that the Patriarch had refused to treat Malka's mother, and that was why she was the ward of Cirkos.

"Stand aside, stupid girl," snarled the Patriarch, and backhanded the little girl viciously with his bony hand.

Kate gasped, but before she could make a move, Igor made a sound between a snarl and a sob. He lunged at the Patriarch, but one of the monks threw himself in the way. Whereupon Igor seized him, lifted him over his head and threw him right out the gate. Kate was glad she'd moved!

The Patriarch and his fellows fled, shouting religious invective. But one of them turned, and looked, briefly, right at Kate. "Oh, no," she muttered. She went over to Igor, who was sitting on the ground, looking shocky, with Malka standing defiantly by his side.

"Malka," said Kate, "Are you hurt?"

Her eyes whipped round. They were bright but no tears were falling down her face. There was a bright red weal on her cheek. But her expression was of shocked happiness. "Kate Walker! You're back!"

"Yes, Malka," Kate grinned despite herself. "Are you hurt?"

"It just stings," Malka said stoutly.

"What was happening here?" Kate demanded.

"The Patriarch made Igor drive him on his snowbike," Malka explained breathlessly, "with men with guns on horses with him. They were gone for days, but when they came back, one of them was hurt and the Patriarch was furious! He wanted Igor to take him out again!"

"He's a mean man," said Igor. "I don't like him."

"He's been telling people all over town that you and Hans were trying to find evil magic and turn it loose on the world," Malka said, childish outrage on her face. "Some of them are listening. They throw things at me. One of them called me a useless gypsy!"

Kate was horrorstruck. "Didn't Cirkos do anything?"

"He knocked the man out with a vodka bottle," Malka said, a smile almost appearing. "But now you're here, they will be angry, Kate Walker!"

"Okay, well," Kate said. "Igor, is your snowbike still working?"

"Yes," Igor said, perking up.

"Can I use it?"

"No," Igor said. "It's mine. I drive it."

"Oh," Kate said, thinking desperately. "It's okay. You can drive it."

Igor was suddenly on his feet, and said, "Oh. Okay. Where we going?"

"I need you to go..." Kate trailed off. Somehow she wasn't sure of Igor's merits as a messenger, and she doubted any of the Youkols read English. "I need you and Malka to go back up the rail line to the river and the old lodge." She turned to Malka, "Malka, there are a group of Youkols there. Tell them the ones who attacked the village are here, and I'm heading for Barrockstadt beyond the wall. All they have to do is follow the railway, but watch out for people trying to stop them. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Kate Walker," Malka said proudly.

"Thank you, both," Kate said.

"Kate," Boris said urgently, "We'd better hurry."


	7. The Mob

They headed off back to the platform stairs. Cirkos came out to meet them. Kate told him about Malka's mission, but as they spoke, they were brought to a sudden halt. Kate had a momentary flashback to the old cliched horror movies with the torches and the pitchforks and so on. Except that the three fellows at the bottom of the stairs were carrying axes and sledgehammers, and one had a pistol. Kate wasn't much of a judge of guns, but it looked crummy. Didn't mean it didn't work, though.

"Stop," the biggest of the men said, hefting a sledgehammer.

"What do you care where a lady goes," Cirkos shouted, striding out to join them. "What business is it of yours?"

"It's God's business," said the man with the pistol, easily the youngest of them.

"Bah," said Boris, "It's the business of that counter-revolutionary Patriarch of yours!"

The younger man made a threatening move, advancing past his fellows, but before the move crystallized into anything as discernible as an action, Col. Emeliov had appeared on the stairs behind them, a huge revolver seemingly from nowhere and made a production of cocking it loudly. Youki, standing behind Kate, growled. The young man froze.

Kate looked up at Emeliov. She'd never seen the dozy old cynic look quite so...tall. "I am sure you have no idea how to use that weapon," Emeliov said coldly. "Now stand aside for an officer and a lady!"

Kate's adrenaline levels whipsawed as the men shuffled rigidly aside, and Boris ushered Kate ahead of himself while Cirkos continued abusing the mob in a thunderous voice.

Boris gasped with relief once they reached the platform "I'll never say an unkind word about the army again," he said to Emeliov.

"What happens now, Miss Walker," Emeliov asked.

"I need to get to Barrockstadt," Kate said.

"Barrockstadt, huh," Boris said. "Heard of the place. But in my day it was on the other side of a wall. In every sense of the word."

"There's still the wall," Kate said, "But the only person I know who can help me accomplish anything is there."

"I will gather some supplies, we will use the gangcar," Emeliov said.

"Don't overload it," Kate said, "Youki will have to drive it with all three of us on board."

Emeliov brought a crate with canned goods and a couple of pots and pans. Kate and he finagled space for it alongside her box of relics, and then they piled aboard the gangcar, which Boris had somehow managed to turn around. Kate was in the driver's seat, the two Russian colonels wedged awkwardly in the back. Youki jumped into the rolling cage that allowed him to act as its engine, and they were off.

"We're well away," Boris shouted after it had been a couple of hours. Night had fallen in earnest, and the sky was clear and starry. It was chilly but not so cold Kate couldn't enjoy the view.

"We should stop and get some sleep soon," Kate shouted back.

"We get into the forest first," Emeliov bellowed. They did indeed start getting into mountain forests as dusk closed in, and a railway siding allowed them to park the gangcar.

Colonel Emeliov, old campaigner that he was, made the fire while Kate unpacked the food. Youki collapsed in a heap as the fire got going.

"We have to get to Barrockstadt," said Kate. "If we get to Aralbad, we can rest and then carry on."

"Aralbad," Emeliov asked, "the old resort?"

"Yes. I passed through on the way there. It's where I met Hans for the first time," Kate said, wistfully.

"I am not sure that will be enough," Emeliov said. "To Aralbad is no trouble. We can be there by end of day tomorrow, but your friend there," he nodded at Youki, "cannot go like that forever. I have worked with horses. Remarkable beasts, but too many men treat them as machines."

Kate stared into the woods a moment. An Arctic hare, its winter coat giving way to patches of springtime brown, slipped between the trees. The fact that Youki didn't even stir at its presence spoke volumes about how tired he was, though.

Kate nodded, "Yes, I understand. What can we do instead?"

"Switch vehicles," Boris said. "If he can make it to Komkolzgrad, I'll find us a vehicle. There are still one or two stashed away there."

Kate said, "Boris, that all sounds good, but what about Sergei Borodin?"

Boris pulled a sour face at the mention of the deranged former director of the Komkolzgrad complex. But he shrugged, "Ah, well, it's a big complex. I'd bet we can get in without him even noticing us."

Kate thought he sounded less than convinced, but agreed. "Okay, we'll go with that plan, then," Kate agreed, and then yawned hugely.

"Time to sleep," Emeliov said.

"Are the supplies secure?" Kate asked. "I've had experiences with bears."

Emeliov laughed, "I will have to tell you stories."

"There are bears out here?" Boris said.

"Probably," said Emeliov, "But we'll keep the fire up and they will stay away."

And," Kate paused, as the hooting of the harfang drifted through the trees, "I think we've got other protection to count on."

Boris shook his head and said, "Never thought of spirits or anything like that as anything other than old-fashioned."

"So did I, once," Kate replied.


	8. End of the Line

They were off again at daybreak. Kate had kept a parcel of dried fish from the Youkols, and Youki devoured them. It gave him the strength to run the cramped gangcar, and by the time they paused for lunch, the sea was in view.

"Not long to Aralbad," said Emeliov. "If we find a vehicle there, we can be at Komkolzgrad by nightfall.

"That might not be a good idea," Kate said. "I know you know the place, Boris, but Komkolzgrad isn't the kind of place I'd want to hang around in when it's getting dark."

"Harder for Borodin to spot us," Boris countered.

Youki yawned expansively, and for the first time, he exhibited reluctance to climb back into the drive cage of the gangcar. 

"Hang in there, You..." Kate said. Then she stopped as she heard something: a train whistle, coming from behind them. "What was that," she exclaimed.

Col. Emeliov fished around in one of his coat pockets and produced a pair of binoculars. He looked through them back up the tracks, and almost said something that might have been a curse. She handed the binoculars off to Kate, "See for yourself."

Kate twisted around, raising the binoculars and nearly swore as well. A train - a boxy work train with winches and other things - was barrelling up the track toward them. It appeared to be crowded with people, and among them she recognized the black robe and tall hat of the Patriarch.

"Where the heck did they get that?" Kate exclaimed.

"The one time Maintenance actually shows up, they get their train commandeered!" Emeliov said in exasperation.

"We can't stop in Aralbad," Kate said. "We'd be sitting ducks, and so would everyone who lives there!"

"Our engine here's about tuckered out," Boris said urgently. Youki looked eager but he was clearly flagging.

"Help him," Kate urged, "Spin it from the outside!"

"Power of the People," Boris said approvingly. "Colonel, help me out!"

"Good luck!"

Kate pulled on her goggles and called out, "Here goes!" Boris and Emeliov looked like they were doing aerobic squats, pulling the crossbars on the drivewheel to give it momentum so Youki didn't have to. They definitely weren't going at top speed, but as Kate checked anxiously over her shoulder, the work train didn't grow noticeably closer.

The rail line hooked around the bay, and the Aralbad spa hotel passed into view. And then out of it again.

Kate looked at it as it went by. She'd wanted to stop by, tell Felix she was sorry to hear about the passing of Mdme. Romanski.

That seemed like the most imminent problem, until the first bullet impact sprayed snow off an embankment beside the tracks.

"They're shooting at us," Kate shouted, "Get down!"

She checked that the others had ducked, and she heard a bullet clanged off the drive wheel. But Youki, running inside it, didn't break stride, although he was obviously getting tired.

Kate kept her head down as much as possible, glancing anxiously at her companions. Emeliov had stopped spinning and cage and was rummaging awkwardly. Reaching into his coat, he drew the big revolver and took aim. He fired once, twice. In the distance, Kate thought she heard brakes squeal.

"That has put them off!" Emeliov bellowed.

They roared on, the day growing old, but the gangcar started to lose speed. Boris and Emeliov were getting almost as tired as Youki by the time the decomposing smokestacks and factory blocks of Komkolzgrad appeared on the horizon.

"We'll have to stop soon," Kate called.

"There's a train platform in the complex," Boris called.

"I mean before that," Kate shouted back. "We can't go past the statue!"

"Why not," Boris exclaimed.

"Uh," Kate said, "Because Oscar and I blew it up!"

Emeliov, usually so taciturn and lugubrious, burst out laughing.

The metallic tang of the air around Komkolzgrad was upleasantly familiar to Kate, but the memories were oddly mixed. She'd used a bomb - a bomb! - to escape a dastardly villain. It had been terrifying, but also exhilirating in its way.

The wreckage of the idol of Soviet workmanship blocked the tracks, and the snow was dirty and thin on the ground.

"Okay," Kate said. "End of the line."


	9. Komkolzgrad Reprise

The whole group staggered off the gangcar. "That certainly gets the blood pumping," Boris said shakily. He was trembling noticeably.

"Grab the boxes," she said.

"I don't know if we can carry all the supplies," Boris said.

"If this goes the way I think it will," said Kate, "We should be okay. We'll pack along some of the basics."

"I don't like it here," Emeliov said grimly as they started into the complex, Boris leading the way.

"Neither do I," Kate said frankly. She was behind Boris, then Col. Emeliov and Youki. Emeliov's peg leg slowed him down, and he wasn't up for carrying a crate of supplies, but he watched their back with his pistol.

They clambered over the wreckage and onto the platform, and Kate said, "Colonel Emeliov, do you think you could lead the way?

Emeliov looked at her, and then looked as his pistol, and nodded.

The heavy door leading off the platform onto the factory floor was open, and Kate felt a thrill of anxiety as she re-entered that ghastly, dark space.

As before, it was hung with chains, hooks, blocks and tackles, and scattered about with old tools and machine parts. And, through a forest of scaffolding, Kate saw the organ. The crazed Sergei Borodin had built it, and its automaton player. She wondered if he knew that his beloved Helena Romanski had passed away? And if so, with what effect on his madness?

"Horrible place," Emeliov repeated.

"Have to agree," Boris said. "Keep an eye out for that kook Borodin."

"Is this the director you spoke of?" Emeliov asked.

"The very one," Boris said.

"Up here," said Kate, heading for the ladder up to the factory control room.

Boris followed. Col. Emeliov passed his gun to Boris and struggled up the ladder, his peg leg ill-suited to it, but Boris gave him a hand up at the top. "Spaciba, comrade," Emeliov said. Boris looked startled but pleased.

Once Youki had gotten up, Kate turned her attention to the tram terminal across the landing. "Come on, Boris," she said.

The elevated director's office off to the side looked much as Kate remembered when she'd confronted Borodin: a bank of controls and CCTV screens.

"Now, I saw Borodin summon the monorail car," Kate said. "Now how did he do it?"

"Let me check something, too," Boris said, and started working the controls. Somehow, he got the CCTVs turned on, and Kate saw him cycling between several feeds, until he said, "Aha! Perfect!"

"What," Kate said, still looking carefully at the panel she thought called the monorail.

"The airship! The one you took to Aralbad! It's still here!"

"Are you serious?" Kate exclaimed, "That's perfect! And..." she pulled a lever and said, "I think I've got it!"

The tram arrived, and they piled in together. Within a couple of minutes they were up on the mountainside that housed the Komkolzgrad cosmodrome, climbing up its walkways and gantries. Kate was gasping for breath. Emeliov wheezed, but impressed sounds replaced his distaste as he looked around at the nameless cranes, water towers, satellite dishes and other things Kate couldn't identify.

"We're nearly there," Boris panted. He was lugging the crate with their rations in it.

"We must hurry," Emeliov said, "Look!"

They turned. They'd zigzagged up the side of the mountain. Below them, the volcanic plain around Komkolzgrad stretched off, and the Patriarch's stolen work train was coming up the rain line.

Finally they mounted the platform of the cosmodrome complex. Kate blinked, recognizing the iron courtyard near the launch platform where she'd first found Boris, and sobered him up enough to help her complete her original mission of finding Hans Voralberg.

No sooner had she taken that in, then a crackling noise rang from the higher walkways, and a sound like giant hailstones clanging off the metal flooring made Kate jump and stumble. Youki yelped and barked in panic.

"It's Borodin!" Boris yelled.

"Get to the airship," Kate yelled, frantically juggling her box of relics. The weight shift made her sway as she tried to run for the scaffold stairway.

"He's up there," roared Emeliov, "Go! I will cover you!" He raised his pistol and fired twice, an earsplitting noise compared to Borodin's automatic weapon above them.

"I have you now, Kate Walker," a crazed-sounding tenor roared from overhead, "You took Helena from me! You cannot escape me with sots, cripples and beasts! Ahahaha!"

"Maniac," Kate muttered as Emeliov fired again.

They headed for the launch area. In the middle, the massive spring-catapult that had launched Boris on his flying wing stood. Above it, the gantry platform led up to the massive dirigible airship moored overhead. Rusty, coated in bird droppings it was, nevertheless, an encouraging sight.

Boris led the way up the scaffold stairs. Kate's heart was pounding from the exertion, but it nearly seized up as more bullets rattled off the metalwork. She looked round briefly. Sergei Borodin was advancing across the launch area, his red coat flapping, his mouth contorted under the leathery half-mask he wore over his scarred face. And he was carrying what Kate was pretty sure - if only going off of action movies - was an AK-47!

Emeliov fired his hand cannon from the steps below where Kate stood, and Borodin spun, diving out of the line of fire. "Let's go, Colonel!"

"Indeed," Emeliov growled. "I must reload."

Kate's arms felt near to popping out as she lunged onto the boarding platform with her box in hand. More bullets clanged off the gantry, and she swore she felt one impact the metal mesh right under her feet.

She half fell into the dirigible's cabin.

"Boris, help me," said Kate as she put down her box and headed for the controls.

"What do you need," he asked.

"We need to change this thing's destination for Barrockstadt."

"I can do that," Boris said. He tossed aside the crate of canned food he'd been carrying, muttering about, "Guidance override..."

"What are you looking for," Emeliov demanded, "He's reloading down there!"

"Got it," Boris said. There was a clang, the floor seemed to shift, and the dirigible began to move. The automaton pilot sprang erect, and began steering the airship up and across. Kate fancied she heard a parting bullet from Borodin plink off the airship's belly.

Kate checked in the supplies and found a couple of bottles of water and passed them round. She almost longed for vodka, to relax her frayed nerves. Her hands shook as she pried off the cap of the water. She went up to stand beside the automaton pilot, now steering through a cloud bank with its eyes fixed firmly ahead. She looked at it sadly for a moment, remembering Oscar, her engine driver, now lost. This automaton didn't have that spark of personality that Hans could give them.

"Kopec for your thoughts, Kate Walker," Boris said, coming up alongside.

"Just remembering absent friends," Kate said, shrugging.

"Sorry I didn't get to see Mr. Voralberg again," Boris said. "But I'm glad he found what he was looking for."

"Me too."

"What about you, Kate? You find what you were looking for?"

"In a way," Kate said thoughtfully. "But I feel like, if I just disappear after all this, or settle down, or whatever, it wouldn't matter, somehow. No one would understand, or even really believe me. No one would know how big the world really is!"

"Is that why we're going to Barrockstadt?"

"Yes," Kate said. She fished in her jacket and produced a sheaf of papers. "I have notes here for a proposal for the university. One that will make something out of this adventure. If I'm lucky, maybe I'll get more of them out of it!"

"You've got the spirit of a cosmonaut, Kate Walker," Boris said, grinning. He cast an eye around the dingy airship. "It may not fly as high, but if we're stopped a while in Barrockstadt I can probably give this thing a bit of an overhaul. Could be a useful thing to have, I think."

"Boris!" Kate said, eyes widening. "That would be - but, no, Boris, I've asked too much of you already. Both of you!"

"Seems to me as I owe you something for giving me this shot at adventure," Boris said. "And I owe Hans an old debt. We never could have gotten my flying wing off the ground if it hadn't been for both of you."

Kate turned anxiously to Emeliov, "Colonel?"

Emeliov was sittng tiredly in the back. Youki was curled up at his feet. "I have to say that it has done my heart good to have one last campaign." He winced and rubbed at the stump where his flesh and blood leg met the peg. "Such bravery as yours, Miss Walker, deserves support." He tossed off a casual salute.

Youki looked up and yapped. Kate laughed, "Well, I knew you were on board, Youki!"

They all laughed, and Kate said, "Alright, let's go to university, everyone!"


	10. Any Landing

"What a monument of folly," the Patriarch snarled, wheezing and out of breath as he and his crusaders, as he called them, finally found their way up to the platform where they'd seen the airship take off. They'd lost their way two or three times in doing it, in this castle of devilry!

"Quickly," he shouted to his monks and followers, "Find the highest vantage points! We must find out which way they are going!"

As the men ran out across the metallic courtyard with its bizarre machinery, shots rang out. Most of the men scattered. One spun round and raised his pistol toward the control room seemingly built into the rock wall behind. Another snarl of fire, and the pistoleer spasmed, spun backward and collapsed. The Patriarch turned, holy fire in his eyes, and bellowed, "You will pay for that, infidel!"

"You come into my factory complex, you prate about it as if it were not a glorious monument of the People, and call me infidel for defending it from bandits like yourselves?"

"I am the Patriarch of Romansbourg," the Patriarch roared back, "And we are on a holy crusade to vanquish a conniving whore, who spits in the face of God and gives succor to those who live as beasts outside of His grace! As for plundering your palace of machines," the Patriarch sneered, "It seems to me very much as though you are powerless to prevent that anyway!"

The man, in red and wearing a face-covering leather mask of some sort, froze, his gun unmoving. "You are pursuing Kate Walker?"

"What do you know of her," the Patriarch demanded.

"I know that that interloping American harpy stole from me, and destroyed one of the monuments of my factory complex! Now she has escaped me, and taken an airship, property of the State!"

"Then, perhaps," said the Patriarch, his voice becoming more calm and thoughtful, "We can make...common cause."

He didn't make a great effort to disguise the distaste for this idea, but after a moment's pause, Borodin lowered his assault rifle and said, "Agreed."

"Excellent," the Patriarch grinned a skull-like grin. "Now, our train lacks fuel and the tracks are blocked. Will you help us?"

"I doubt I have fuel for your train, and it would take days to clear the tracks," Borodin said.

"Then in God's name, what..." the Patriach began, but Borodin interrupted.

"But I believe I have something even better."

"We're losing altitude," Boris remarked. It was evening now, and the rocky, snowblown grasslands and wooded marshes of Eastern Europe passed by below.

"Do you know why," Kate asked.

"Probably we copped a bullet through the dirigible," Boris said grimly. "It's not fast, so it's probably a small leak, but we'd better get across this wall soon if we don't want to walk the last stretch!"

"I have only a half dozen rounds left," Emeliov said, patting the pocket that held his revolver. "We would be wise to avoid another fight."

"I certainly agree," Kate said with feeling. She looked back out over the landscape and said, "Look, there, it's the Barrockstadt Wall!"

"Oh, good," Boris said with relief. "I hate these lumbering gas bags. Give me a jet or a rocket any day."

"Oh, bad," Emeliov sighed. "I think we have a problem."

"Another one," Kate sighed. "Of course." She spoke lightly to hide the creeping foreboding this announcment provoked.

Emeliov was sitting in the back of the cabin, and looking out with his binoculars. "Have a look," he said, handing them to Kate.

She took a second to zero in on what he was seeing, but the ripped up turf and churning ponds eventually led her to the cause. It was a low, caterpillar-tracked vehicle, painted in gunmetal grey, and covered in little hatchways. Heads were poking out of several of them, arms bracing rifles on the hull. One of them with the Patriarch, and it seemed for a moment as if he was looking straight at Kate with those fevered eyes. And on the back of the vehicle, standing up in a rooftop hatch of some sort, was Sergei Borodin, wielding his assault rifle.

"Oh, god," Kate exclaimed, "is that a tank?"

"Nyet, Miss Walker," Emeliov sighed. "It is a BTR-D Armoured Personnel Carrier."

"They actually left one of those behind in the complex," Boris exclaimed.

"At least they had the sense to remove its cannon," Emeliov said.

"We've got to go faster," Kate said. "Boris, let's see what we can do here."

Boris rousted beckoned to Emeliov, and, with difficulty, he managed to give Boris a boost up to the hatchway in the roof. He dropped it open, cursed the lack of a ladder, and climbed up into the rumbling cavernous space above. After a minute or two clumping around up there, he said, "Ah! This drive gear is almost stripped! Small wonder we're not getting the power from the engine to the props!"

"Can you do anything?"

"I can overdrive the engine, make up for the loss. But it'll strip the gear that much faster!"

"Well, better that than coming down on the wrong side of the wall," Kate said.

"True enough," Boris said.

Kate hastened to the back of the compartment. Down the length of the airship, she saw the propellors begin to spin faster, and faster still. Boris dropped back into the compartment a minute later, his hands smeared with grease, "That's done it! Don't know how long it'll hold, though!"

"Okay," said Kate, "Here's hoping we can stay in the air that long!"

A loud impact made one of the windows of the gondola shatter, and all three travellers ducked briefly.

"This really is not going well," growled Col. Emeliov.

"We not going to make it," Boris groaned.

"Nobody panic," said Kate, suddenly sharp. "Look, that moldy old cleric couldn't catch me and Hans when all I had was an emtpy coffin and a snowy hillside to work with. We've got a whole airship!"

"Well," Emeliov conceded, looking at Boris, "It is a useful advantage, control of the air, is it not, Comrade Charnov?"

"The best advantage," Boris agreed. More shots rattled off the gondola's hull. Boris rubbed his hands together, "We need to maneuver, as much as we can. And I don't think that automaton's designed for evasive flying."

"Then Boris, tell me what to do!" Kate snapped.

Boris stared at Kate for a moment. She planted her hands on her hips and looked right back into his ragged, scruffy, bloodshot-eyed face. And he looked for a moment at his trembling hands, and said, "Okay, Kate." He went to the controls and pulled a lever. The automaton took its hands off the wheel and it slid back on some kind of railing out of the way.

Kate nodded and grinned at Boris, "Thank you, Comrade."

Kate took the wheel, and said, "Okay, how do I fly evasively?"

"Start with weaving around," Boris said, "S-pattern. Emeliov, boost me back up into the machine room, and then you can keep and eye on their position."

"What are you going to do," Emeliov said, nevertheless complying to assisting Boris back into the crawlspace above.

"Try and keep us airborne." With that, he clambered out of sight.

Kate, meanwhile, twiddled the wheel and felt the ship lean into the turns. She also felt it drop noticeably.

It took a depressingly short time before Emeliov, in the back of the gondola, cried, "Veer hard right! Hard right!"

Kate nearly fell over, startled by the responsiveness of the steering. A series of distant gunshots reached them through the broken window, but there was no impact or damage. Kate laughed with relief, then she started scanning the advancing wall. She turned back to the right slightly.

"Miss Walker, that's not a good idea."

"Maybe not," Kate said, "But it's the right way: I see the gate! Boris, can we get any more speed?"

"No way," Boris said, "This is as good as it..."

"Left," cried Emeliov.

Kate turned, but she didn't dare deviate too far from the gate. The airship lurched forward, and there was a whoosh of gas.

"We're hit, the gasbag's burst," Emeliov said.

"We're going faster," cried Kate.

"Darn right," Boris laughed from up above. "They ruptured the gas bag aft! It's acting like a rocket engine!"

"Please tell me this isn't a hydrogen airship," Emeliov said.

"Helium," Boris said indignantly, "Do I sound German to you?"

"We're going down," Kate cried. They might not fall short, but then, they might hit the wall too.

"Down!" Emeliov yelled, and then the windows at the back of the gondola exploded. They'd dropped low enough to be easy prey for the gunmen chasing them. Kate dove for the floor, but almost the moment she'd hit it, the incoming fire stopped. Kate scrambled back up, looking the forward windows.

"Hold on!" Kate yelled.

The airship just clipped the top of the Barrockstadt Wall. Struggling to keep her balance, Kate heaved on the steering wheel, and the airship belly-flopped onto the scrubby grass between the University building's wing and the canal that ran alongside the railway. The cracked windows shattered, metal screeched, and the stink of burning oil filled the air.


	11. Proposals

Kate pulled herself back onto her feet. She turned to find Emeliov picking himself up, apparently no worse for the crash.

"Any landing you can walk away from," Boris sighed, climbing down into the gondola, staggering as his feet hit the deck.

"Is that wall guarded," Emeliov said, looking out the broken window.

"Yes," Kate said, "By one person!"

Emeliov muttered something darkly in Russian, but Kate was already sprinting across the grass and up the tower of the gateway. She found the duty officer's post, and hammered on the door. "Captain! Captain Malatesta!"

The door swung open abruptly, and a thin, upright man with a military moustache and peaked cap stood before her. He stared through thick glasses, blinked, and exclaimed, "Kate Walker! Good God, was that you in the airship?"

"Me and three others," Kate said, counting Youki. "I have to warn you, there are men coming in a stolen armoured personnel carrier! They're..."

Kate ducked instinctively as a flurry of gunshots split the air. Malatesta staggered, but with shock, not injury. It dawned on Kate that the shots had been some distance away.

"Good God," Malatesta cried, "I shall have a look at this!"

Kate followed him into the border post, where the officer went to the telescope mounted in front of the slitlike window. He peered through it. Kate noticed that he'd gotten new glasses since she'd been here last.

"Well," said Malatesta after a moment, "If we are under attack, at least the, uh, cavalry is here too!"

"What?" Kate demanded impatiently.

"See for yourself," he said, and yielded the telescope.

She peered through it, and gasped. The armoured personnel carrier was barrelling over the rocky landscape beyond the wall, but it was swerving and the heads and arms sticking out were flailing madly. And then, weaving around their path, bouncing along more lightly than the big military vehicle, were three others: a snowbike and two sleighs pulled by big Youkis! 

"Oh no," Kate cried, "They'll be killed!"

"Not to worry, Miss Walker," Malatesta said. She turned, and saw the lonely border guard, grinning like a child whose Christmases had all come at once, holding a telephone receiver. "I'll see to them. Hello? This is Captain Malatesta at the Barrockstadt Border Post and this is a Code Cossack-2!"

When he was off the phone, Kate said, "Captain, you have to let the Youkols in!"

"Not to worry, ma'am," Malatesta declared grandly, "I will open the gates to them. No one else will pass! Reinforcements will be here in a moment, and I shall hold them off as I may." He went to a locker on the wall and brought down a long, scoped rifle. He took up position next to Kate, bracing the barrel on the windowsill. Kate was quietly thankful the nearsighted officer had replaced his glasses.

Malatesta's rifle fired so loudly Kate's ears range. Looking through the telescope, she saw a Romansbourg rifleman spasm and fall out of the vehicle in a heap. The vehicle whipsawed as the driver panicked.

Kate recoiled from the telescope, feeling a little sick. Somehow it was worse than watching Ivan being cut to pieces after she'd gotten the vile thief off the Mammoth Ark...

"They're veering off!" Malatesta said with satisfaction. He went to the control box across the room and threw a massive lever.

"Good," Kate said wanly. She dashed out onto the wall's rampart, seeking a wider view than the telescope. She spotted the weaving force of Youkols and - her eyes widened in horror - Igor and Malka on the snowbike, and the mechanism of the gate was moving noisily around her. She waved frantically with both hands, yelling over the machinery. Finally, she saw both sleighs and the bike converging on the gateway.

Kate bolted down the stairs, and as she came sprinting out onto the snowy university lawn, the Youki-drawn sleighs almost outran the motorized snowbike through the gate.

Kate ran to them as they came to a halt, the Youkis wheezing and sinking down on trembling legs. Malka sprang off the snowbike and ran to Kate.

"Kate Walker," she cried, "we made it! We delivered your message!"

A roaring engine interrupted what Kate had been about to say, and they all looked round as the old personnel carrier came barrelling through the gate. The Hans-built pivoting gate was closing already, but it wasn't going to be fast enough.

"Get inside," Kate said, "Malka, all of you, get..."

No sooner had she said it than the carrier roared through the archway, heading straight down the train tracks. And then an honest-to-goodness tank came charging along the wall and rammed into the side of the carrier. Despite its imposing, armoured appearance, the carrier was nothing compared to a tank. Its hull caved in like a garage door being hit by a truck, and it spun off course ending up almost facing the opposite direction. Steam came spraying out of the radiator. The hatch at the back half-fell off its hinges. The men inside had their guns, axes and other weapons, but they were dazed and staggering. And as they emerged, a column of men with rifles and urban camouflage uniforms charged in the tank's wake and surrounded them, yelling at the men in German. Kate didn't catch it, but all of the Patriarch's followers dropped their weapons and dropped to their knees, hands on their heads.

Malatesta came striding toward Kate and the others, and remarked, "Well, Miss Walker. You do know how to make an entrance."

A woman, in a similar greatcoat to Malatesta's, approached. Malatesta straightened and nodded respectfully as she came up and said, "Major Ehrenfried, 2nd Barrockstadt Grenzer Regiment. Who are you?"

Kate handed over her passport, which was scrutinized, and then said, "I'm returning from an expedition to Siberia," she said. "These men assaulted me and my friends, stole a military vehicle, and tried to kill us."

"You have persons with you from the other side of the wall," Ehrenfried said sharply.

"They're my friends! They helped me get away from those yahoos!" She pointed accusingly at the knot of prisoners.

"And how do I know you have honourable intentions?" the Major demanded.

"I have spoken with Miss Walker before," Malatesta said, "She is honourable."

"I also have an appointment with Prof. Pons at the University," Kate added, capitalizing on Malatesta defending her to a fellow officer. "I must proceed!"

"The University," Ehrenfried said, "Is a tired place with much less power than it thinks."

"Nonetheless, this is their affair. If the professor works with these people, they must proceed," Malatesta said.

Ehrenfried sighed, nodded, and said. "Very well."

Kate crossed the lawn to the airship.

"Boris," Kate said, "See what, if anything, you can do with the airship?"

"Will do. That wrecked APC might have some useful parts. Comrade Emeliov, and you, Comrade Igor, give me a hand?"

Kate sprang up to the University entrance. She passed the great train station aviary, grateful that they hadn't hit it. Then up the steps of the University, flanked by its grand mammoth statues. The automaton bandstand was still playing.

I've travelled a long way since I stood here, Kate thought. So strange, knowing what Hans was doing now, and understanding everything around her. He must have loved it here.

She entered the front hall, where the University's affiliation with natural science was on display: rows of skeletons of mammoths, elk, rhinos and other animals up and down the hallway. Kate made her way to Prof. Pons' laboratory.

The elderly palaeontologist stared at her in even greater astonishment than Boris and Emeliov had. "Good heavens! Kate Walker! It's you! What a commotion! What mayhem! How did you come to be here again?"

She strode - a little shakily - up to his desk at the front of the room, reached into her pocket, and produced the mammoth doll, and set it down triumphantly. "We made it. Hans made it."

"You reached the Youkols," Pons breathed.

"We did more than that, Professor," Kate said, instinctively she was compelled to drop her voice to a whisper, "we reached Syberia."

Pons' expression grew vacant momentarily. "Syberia...but...it can't be!"

Kate reached into another pocket and produced some of the Syberian blue grass. "You can check that against the legends. I don't think it exists anyplace else either."

"No indeed! A temperate island, in the Arctic? But, where's Hans?"

"Hans...is gone. He stayed in Syberia," Kate said. "I'm accompanying the Youkols now."

"The Youkols," squeaked Pons, "Here? Good gracious, what is happening?"

"I've come back to speak to you," Kate said. "I want to show you a few things, and I want to put a proposal before you."

By the end of the conversation, Kate and Pons were both sitting down at one of the lab counters, and Kate had her box of relics between them.

"But what is this proposal you speak of?" Pons asked.

"I was wondering," Kate said, and felt her mind slip, almost pleasurably, into 'lawyer mode,' "if it would be advantageous to the University to sponsor a book about Hans' voyage, and the discoveries made along the way. With these relics, we could make a travelling exhibit to promote it!"

Pons goggled, then said, "Well, Miss Walker, we are rather more in the business of peer-reviewed academic publications..."

"And you can make those too," Kate returned, "But correct me if I'm wrong, the university could benefit from a profitable publication. When I was a lawyer, we represented some New York publishing firms who'd take a story with that premise."

"New York publishers," Professor Pons went briefly cross-eyed. "You'll have to submit a formal proposal to the Rectors, you know."

Kate nodded, expecting that. "The airship my colleagues and I were travelling on is in the shop, so to speak. So I might be here a while, even when the Youkols do catch up with us. Is there someplace I can stay for a while? And have access to a computer or typewriter?"


	12. Truth and Reconciliation

As it turned out, the down-on-its-luck university had lots of vacant offices and dorm rooms. Kate ended up in a disused office with a computer so old it didn't even have a mouse, but she muddled her way to the word processor and started typing.

As Kate got through the meat of the document, she began realizing how tired she was getting. The adrenaline spike from the chase and dramatic arrival finally started to wind down.

Luckily, there was a slightly motheaten fainting couch in the office - she fancied it might have been a psychiatry professor's office at some point - and she flopped down onto it for a break.

She must have fallen asleep, because a momentary vision of mammoths turned suddenly into being shaken awake by Boris.

"Better wake up, Kate, we've got a problem!"

"Is it the Youkols?

"They're okay, I think," Boris said. "They're camped out on the lawn now. But I checked with those soldiers from Barrockstadt, and they got all the followers, but the Patriarch and Borodin are both missing!"

"What," Kate sprang up. "How?"

"Maybe they bailed out before coming through the gate," Boris said, shrugging helplessly. "Where they went after that? Who knows?"

Kate shook her head, equally helplessly. "Well, with the soldiers on alert, I don't suppose there's much they can do. I'd better get back to work."

She polished up the document and was printing it off while Boris brought her up to date. "I think can get the airship back up to code. Enough of the APC's gearing system is left I can do a full replacement."

"That's excellent, Boris. But what about the gas bags?"

"Those the army here is willing to help out with. Should be ready to go in a couple of hours at this rate."

"Good." She glanced around, "What time is it?"

"Uh, about two-thirty, I think?"

"I'd better go," Kate said, jumping to her feet. No sooner had she risen, then there was a knock at the door.

Three people came in: the Youkol Spirit Woman led the way, followed by Professor Pons. The door was held open for them by the third person: a man of late middle age, with an odd contrast of his academic robe with a bushy, greying beard and longish hair.

"Ms. Walker I presume," asked the man in a clear, jovial voice. Quite unlike the reedy exclamations she was accustomed to around Barrockstadt. "By an amusing coincidence, I'm Dr. William Walker. Department of Anthropology."

Kate shook his hand, frowning slightly as the name nudged her memory. Then she said, "Oh! Sat your exams in 1968 in jeans, am I right?"

Dr. Walker started, then laughed aloud. "I see the old Rectors' memories are still holding! Speaking of them, Miss Walker, I understand you have a proposal to put to them?"

"Something that will make the University not have to depend on selling bootleg wine anymore."

Prof. Pons looked abashed by the comment.

"Would you mind summarizing for us, Miss Walker?" Prof. Walker asked.

Kate beamed. "I've picked up quite a few relics in my travels, as Prof. Pons may have told you. I can corroborate the experiences I've had. And I think you'll find this interesting: everything I've read and seen and learned indicates that the Youkol people," she gestured at the Spirit Woman. "And everything people thought were myths about them herding mammoths and travelling the world, I think it must be true! They inspired Hans to live his whole life looking for the last vestiges of mammoths! The Youkols did ride mammoths, they built incredible houses and ships and I think...I think they once did have a great civilization. I don't know the timeline of ancient civilizations offhand, but I think that's earlier than most! It's an incredible story, and on top of it all..."

"Uh, Miss Walker?" Professor Walker interrupted. Pons looked irritated at the break in Kate's remarks, but Prof. Walker looked suddenly serious. "Have you asked the Youkols about this?"

"Of course! I learned this speaking to them!"

"But we did not say you could tell anyone else."

Kate looked down at the Spirit Woman, and she said, "But, but it's a great story! Everyone should hear it!"

"Not your decision, Kate Walker," Spirit Woman said coldly. "We showed Hans our world because he proved himself our friend. So have you. But that does not mean you're to show others."

"But...that doesn't make sense," Kate cried defensively.

"Miss Walker," the anthropologist said urgently, "you have to understand that the Youkol culture has a right to its secrets. You've clearly been given access to some of them, but that doesn't mean you have ownership of them."

"It's not just that, it's Hans' story, it's my story!"

"You are like the others," the Spirit Woman said, shaking her head. "Agents of Czar. Of Soviet. They come and demand to know who we are, and then tell us we are wrong. Tell everyone who we are, and then, like blowflies, swarm around and turn us into something else. Like this," the Spirit Woman marched over to Kate's box of relics and withdrew the stone medallion, "Taken from a dead Youkol ancestor, yes? From his resting place? And now it is yours, Kate Walker?"

"Kate," Prof. Walker said urgently, "If you go public with what the Youkols have shown you, do you think people are likely to leave them alone?" 

Kate blinked, and then she flashed back to the Patriarch, crazed with righteousness and willing to go on some kind of crusade against anyone different. And Ivan. She'd had to leave him to his death rather than have him plunder the Youkols' relics of mammoths. And she remembered Pons discussing how the Youkols had suffered from people trying to steal their land and ways away from them.

Kate felt suddenly sick. She dropped to her knees and spoke to the Spirit Woman on her level. "Oh, god, I am so sorry! I...I just wanted..."

"Wanted to share your story," the Spirit Woman said, nodding in understanding. "But how much of that story is yours, Kate Walker?"

"I...I don't know how to answer that." Then her eyes widened, "What can I tell the rectors? What can I tell anyone? I'm exhausted and there's no time to come up with something else!"

"You must see through Youkol eyes," the Spirit Woman says seriously.

"Oh my goodness," Prof. Walker said.

"I don't understand."

"If I'm understanding correctly, you're to join them on the rest of their quest. Would I be correct in assuming, Spirit Woman, that you're going to seek communion with your ancestral spirits?"

The Spirit Woman nodded up at him, a look very like approval on her weathered face.

"Kate," said Prof. Walker, "if you agree to this, you'll be agreeing to become, effectively, an honorary Youkol. You'll have rights and obligations to go with that. Perhaps that will settle the matter of what you can go public with."

Kate blinked at the Spirit Woman, and when she spoke, she felt her throat tightening up. "After I've put you in such danger, shown you such disrespect, you'd do that for me?"

"You are becoming a wanderer, Kate Walker," the Spirit Woman said. "But you need a destination. And you have done something for Youkols. You found the Spirit Berries we thought lost. Found Syberia. Brought Hans to his dream."

"What do I have to do?"

"Before we find house of ancestors, you must fast, we both must. Then we look for their realm."

"Where do we start looking?"

"Hans followed our ancestors. We follow him."

Kate frowned, then suddenly her eyes widened, her heart speeding up. "Wait, your ancestors, you want to go back to their original home?"

"Yes?"

"I...I think I know where we need to go!"

"How can you know," Pons squealed.

"Because I've been there." Kate went to the box at her desk, fished around in it and brought forth the mammoth doll and rider. "I found this where Hans found it. This is what began his quest. It was in a cave in Valadilene."

The Spirit Woman took it from her, and after she stared at it a moment, she raised it and touched it lightly to her forehead. "It is wonderful. All the way from Youkol ancestors!" She handed it back to Kate and said, "You have found things the Youkols have lost the power to find. Things we have been denied by others. But these things are ours, not yours."

"And, considering my mistakes," Kate said softly, "I'm honoured you would still accept me. If it helps me find my way again, I'll take this journey with you."

Kate got up again and said to Walker and Pons, "I have to go. Please present my apologies to the rectors, but tell them...tell them I have to pursue one last line of inquiry for...for protection against liabilities."

That should keep them on standby for a time," Pons admitted, "But I really don't understand!"

"Professor, verify what you can from the things I leave behind, especially the grasses. Spirit Woman, do you know if the airship is finished?"

"Boris says yes," the Spirit Woman said grimly. "Do not like to fly."

"I understand, but it's spring and there won't be enough snow for the sleds. And it will be faster."

The Spirit Woman nodded in resignation. "Then let us start. You bring mammoth doll, yes?"

"Of course. Prof. Pons saw it before I met you. He can attest to it if necessary. Let's go!"


	13. Acts of Piracy

When they emerged into the college lawn, the airship was indeed looking much better. A hose was connecting the dirigible to a tanker truck. As they approached, Boris came across wiping his hands on a rag.

"She's up and running, Kate," Boris said cheerfully. "Well, running, not up yet. Are we moving on?"

"Yes, Boris," Kate said. "We're heading Valadilene."

"Miss Walker," called a voice. Col. Emeliov came hobbling across the lawn. "I have spoken with Capt. Malatesta. He is a diligent officer, even if inexperienced. His colleagues found something troubling."

"What is it, Colonel?"

"This wall they're so proud of is poorly maintained indeed. They have found several holes where that disused wing of the building meets the wall." He gestured down the canal toward the wall, where part of the university building was indeed in ruins.

"So Borodin and the Patriarch..."

"The grenzers are searching the ruins now," Emeliov said. "But we should hurry, just in case."

"Where are the other Youkols?" Kate asked, "And Igor and Malka?"

"I couldn't convince the grenzers to let them through," Emeliov admitted. "We're stretching our goodwill. But I've sent them back to Romansbourg with news for Cirkos, and he can tell the authorities about the hijacked train. If Borodin and the Patriarch try to go back, they will not find a warm welcome!"

"Right," said Kate. "Let's get underway."

Kate, the Spirit Woman, Emeliov, Boris and Youki boarded the airship. The Spirit Woman's companions gave her a bundle of supplies and then she, with evident reluctance, joined the party.

As they rose into the air, Boris said, "I'm starving. Anyone else hungry?"

"Very, Boris, I..." Kate began, and then glanced at the Spirit Woman's stern expression. "Actually, never mind." Sitting down cross-legged on the floor, she turned to the Spirit Woman. "Is there anything else I should do to prepare for this?"

"Open the windows. Let air and wind come through. Let the elements be around you."

"Are you kidding," cried Boris, "It might be springtime, but that doesn't mean it's warm! We'll freeze!"

"You'd better bundle up, you two," Kate said. She was in her fur leggings but her jacket lay to the side.

"Okay," sighed Boris. Emeliov started opening the windows. Bitterly cold air washed through the cabin. Kate shivered violently, but Youki quickly came and piled into her lap. Kate glanced at the Spirit Woman. "Is this allowed?"

"You tell Youki it isn't?"

"Good point."

"Now, Kate Walker, consider the relic you discovered. Do not speak, just think and feel."

Kate nodded. She set the doll on the metal floor and gazed at it, clinging to Youki and trying to focus on the implications of this voyage, and not her growling stomach.

Sergei Borodin staggered out of the ruined wing of the university, clinging to his rifle. The Patriarch had lost his big hat, and bending through the crumbling doorway was evidently difficult for him, but he wasn't even out of breath. His fellow monk, a twitchy sort, bustled along behind him, very much out of breath.

"The airship is taking off," Borodin hissed, pointing furiously up as the dirigible, now far too high to shoot down, even if the rifle had power enough to do it.

"They fly east by southeast!" The Patriarch cried. "We must follow!"

"How?" Borodin demanded. "We've run right into enemy arms and lost our forces and transport!"

"God will guide me," the Patriarch said loftily, and strode off through the unkempt lawn. They were well past the university building when they picked up the line of the canal. And a barge was chugging up the canal in the same direction as they were going.

"There is our road," the Patriarch cried.

Borodin blinked at the sight, but decided not to let providence float by, no matter what the canting old priest said. He ran ahead and jumped onto the boat's deck. An old man in a cap emerged from the hold and shouted, "Halt! Qui va la, signore?"

But he skidded to a halt as he saw the weapon Borodin was training on him. A woman, the bargeman's wife, presumably, looked around from the wheelhouse and froze, eyes wide. Borodin snarled, "Stop the boat!"

After the boat woman hesitated a moment, Borodin trained his rifle a little to the side and squeezed off one round. The bang made both his prisoners recoil, and one of the windows exploded in the wheelhouse. The woman screamed but she also closed the throttle.

"Come on, priest," Borodin shouted.

"Well done, soldier," said the Patriarch, who all but shoved his monk onto the boat, then snapped his fingers at him until he got up and helped the old man aboard. "We must get underway!"

"And go where," the barge woman demanded.

"We follow that," the Patriarch pointed skyward to the airship, which was not much more than a dot over the horizon.

"As far as we can before this canal parts ways with the airship's course," Borodin pointed out. "Get moving!"

The barge woman opened the throttle and the vessel began to move again.

"Where will they be going," Borodin asked nastily, "Does you god tell you so much?"

"Miss Walker is a persistent enemy," the Patriarch said coldly.

"Walker?" The bargeman blinked at the Patriarch and said, "Der dame anwalt aus Nueva York?"

"My husband says, do you mean the lady lawyer from New York?"

"The very one! Interloping hag!"

"She came on a Voralberg train," the bargewoman said. "Voralberg machines used to be made in Valadilene, in the French Alps!"

At that moment, Borodin heard something he'd never heard before: the other monk with the Patriarch actually said something. "French Alps. Blue warbler's land. Very rare."

The Patriarch demanded, "Does this Valadilene connect with this canal?"

"No, but it joins the river!"

"Very well," the Patriarch said, "We go!"

 _Author's Note: it's a joke in the game the way that the barge captain keeps switching languages for no reason in the Barrockstadt level in_ Syberia I


	14. Country of Ancestors

Kate blinked hard and stifled a yawn. Between the chill and the hollow ache in her belly, her energy was winding down fast. They'd been going all night. Col. Emeliov had taken over the helm while Boris got some sleep, rolled up in blankets across the gondola.

Kate kept trying to keep focused on the mammoth doll, but the more tired she got and the further her blood sugar plummeted, the harder it was to concentrate. She also found herself getting more strung-out and anxious. As the latest wave of bleak possibilities gushed through her, she had to blink back tears.

"Kate Walker?"

The Spirit Woman had been sitting still, eyes closed, for hours. Now she stirred, and looked at Kate with remarkably clear eyes.

"I'm just not sure what I'm supposed to be feeling right now," Kate said helplessly. "I've been looking at the doll for hours, and...am I supposed to be having some kind of revelation or insight? I just keep getting lost thinking about what will happen if this doesn't work."

"You think maybe New York is better after all?" The Spirit Woman had a look any lawyer would recognize, of someone trying to trip somebody into admitting something.

Kate rather resented the double-speak. But then she it occurred to her that someone with secrets they needed to keep couldn't very well be the stereotype of honest spirituality she'd picked up in America. She shook her head firmly, "No. I mean...I don't mean that I never want to set foot there again, or that I hate my family. No, it's just that the life that defined me there was too flat, too superficial."

"Look at the doll again," said the Spirit Woman. Kate complied. "What do you see?"

"It's a child's toy. I think it's made of fur, and wood? No, bone probably. It shows the Youkols riding mammoths, like they did in ancient times. It's made from mammoths, I suppose. It's even stitched with what looks like leather."

"Stitched by whom?" Spirit Woman asked.

Kate blinked, staring at the doll, and shook her head. "I can't know that! It must have been thousands, tens of thousands of years ago!"

"Then that is what you must think about."

Kate took this in, and looked at the doll anew. She had a whimsical instant of imagining a parent giving it to their child, like a Christmas gift, and tried, without entirely understanding why, to concentrate on that image.

After that, Kate wasn't sure how much time had passed when the dirigible jolted. The little doll fell over sideways and Kate started out of her reverie.

"We have arrived," Col. Emeliov said. "Although I do not think they will appreciate our parking place."

Kate shooed Youki off of herself and tried to stand up. But her legs were so stiff and weakened from hunger that she fell hard back onto her backside.

"Allow me, Miss Walker," said Col. Emeliov, helping her up. "You look very pale."

"I'll manage. What time is it?"

"Just after dawn," said Emeliov. Boris was clambering out of his improvised bed. The Youkol Spirit Woman was heading for the hatchway, leaning on Youki.

The cool moisture of the Valadilene pine forests shivered into Kate's lungs, and for a moment she thought she'd misplaced her briefcase and had to go see the notary about the Voralberg factory. Then she remembered that had already happened, what seemed like years ago.

She was even more jolted when she realized the dirigible had alighted right in the middle of the Voralberg factory grounds! In the grey dawn, Kate stared dazedly around at the grand shadows of the factory on one side, and of the Voralberg mansion - Hans' childhood home - on the other side.

"We go on foot from here," Kate said. She caught a look from the Spirit Woman, and said, "Boris, Colonel, I think you'd better stay here. Guard the airship. Boris, hand me my box, please?"

Boris handed it over, saying, "Are you sure? Emeliov at least ought to come with you."

"No," Kate said, "Only I've been invited into this. I've got no right to extend that invitation. Not yet, at least."

Boris grimaced but nodded, and Kate, lugging her box of relics, followed the Spirit Woman into the town, walking as steadily as she could manage.

The high street of Valadilene, cobbled in stone and lined with quaintly beautiful buildings, was silent, the hazy glow of streetlamps cold.

"This is land of ancestors?" The Spirit Woman seemed flummoxed. "All built over!"

"Not here," Kate said, "If it is where I think, it's this way."

They headed down the street. Kate had the unaccountable sense that they ought to be sneaking along, even though there was probably no good reason to. They passed the patisserie, and there was a golden light far back in the window, and the smell of fresh baking. Kate's stomach spasmed painfully at the aroma, but she forced herself to walk by.

Finally, she found the gate that led off behind the town. At the time, it hadn't occurred to Kate to wonder why there was a gate leading to a path behind the town, where the cobbled streets and stone-and-brick architecture abruptly changed into a little narrow lane running along behind the houses. More of the town lay across the little river, another house row. It dawned on Kate that she'd barely even seen that part of Valadilene.

She, Youki and Spirit Woman headed upstream, the same way Momo, the little boy who seemed to share Hans' potential, had led her to find the mammoth doll.

They reached the little paved landing, with its benches and view of the waterfall, and from there they climbed up into the pine forest outside Valadilene. Birds were beginning to sing with the growing daylight. Despite the relatively comfortable spring air, Kate was shaking from her dropping bloodsugar. She walked much more slowly and unsteadily than the last time she'd been here.

"Oh, good," Kate said as they came to a ford in the river, "I was afraid they might have opened the dam again."

Kate, the Spirit Woman and Youki stood where a reef of gravel created a natural bridge. And beyond, in the mountainside, a cave mouth opened, looking almost like a shadowy illusion in the faint dawn light.

Kate set down the box of relics and took out a lantern Boris had found in the airship, along with some matches. Once the lamp was lit, Kate handed it to the Spirit Woman, picked up the box again, and they went into the cave.


	15. Down the Tunnel of Dreams

It felt icy cold inside, but drier than one might expect. The ambient noises of the outdoors faded away, and an intense silence descended. Kate realized she could hear the Spirit Woman's breathing, and it seemed to Kate like someone working very hard to stay calm.

Finally the tunnel opened up, and Kate raised the lantern higher. The light played off of the towers of dripstone, deepening their shadows and making them appear to move. And herds of mammoths, painted in hauntingly fine detail, marched across the walls, as they had for uncounted thousands of years.

The Spirit Woman began to sing, a song in a strange cadence deep in her throat. It was so different to any song Kate knew she wasn't sure how to interpret the emotion in it. To her at least, it sounded like home. She wasn't sure how that made sense, maybe because it was like the soundtrack of that moment. In any event, it was rather infectious and she started humming softly along to it, hoping that wasn't disrespectful. The Spirit Woman didn't seem to mind, although Youki whined restlessly after a few moments.

Continuing singing more quietly, the Spirit Woman started moving around the cave, laying things out: a censer pot like the one they'd used during the ceremony to bring Hans back from...beyond, and a stub of a tallow candle. Then, she turned to Kate and asked, "Mammoth doll! Where was it?"

Kate blinked, and said, "I found it on the floor just over here...but wait, Hans originally found it on top of a pillar. Probably that one." She pointed to the dripstone column on the far side of the cave. "Would that be better?"

"Very good, Kate Walker," she said approvingly.

Even in comparison to people other than the fairly short Youkols, Kate was quite tall. She still had to stand on tip-toe and stretch - shaking from hunger - to put the little doll back in its place.

She rejoined Spirit Woman, and sat down opposite her. She'd taken another relics from Kate's box: the stone medallion from Syberia Island, her drum, and the beautiful mammoth goblet Kate had used to restore Hans in Romansburg. Then she picked up a little leather purse and produced some of the dried up spirit berries Kate had found for her and began grinding them in a little bowl that looked like copper. Kate, obeying instructions to light the oily candle in the goblet, felt a moment's hesitation as the old woman did this. Part of it was prudishness; she'd never done any drug more extreme than alcohol even in college. But the last time she'd gone under the influence of this substance, it had been a difficult experience, and it had cost her Oscar. He'd sacrificed himself, she couldn't have stopped him, and Hans would have died otherwise.

The candle glowed to life, and the light cast the shapes of mammoths across the walls, offset weirdly from the paintings of the great beasts already there.

The Spirit Woman had powdered the berries and mixed in some kind of smelly oil. Then she placed the copper dish overtop of the candle. Kate realized, belatedly, that she was making an scented oil burner. She'd had one in her apartment in New York, and felt foolish for not realizing it earlier.

The oil heated rapidly, and the familiar greenish smoke as last time coiled up into the air, making the air heavy and cloying. Kate, already weary, yawned, and then froze as she stared at the cave wall.

The goblet was designed to rotate, making the luminous mammoths 'march' across the walls. It was doing so, but at the same time...were the mammoth paintings on the wall marching with them?

Light and shadow and stone and paint blurred before Kate's eyes until, suddenly, the light-mammoths seemed to synchronize with the painting-mammoths, and suddenly they were one, walking around and around, and then, at the finish, the cave itself was gone, and she was sitting in the midst of a snow-dusted plain, with blue grass waving in the wind.

"Syberia," Kate breathed staring at the mammoth herds parading along her horizon. A mild breeze carrying a light mist rippled across her face. It smelled like thawing soil, rain and manure, like the farm country in the Hamptons in springtime.

"Yes," said a voice. Kate started. Someone was sitting across from her. It was a small man with thin white hair, wearing a Youkol parka and wearing the medallion of stone etched with runes around his neck. A staff or walking stick lay across his knees. After a couple of seconds, Kate almost recoiled in horror.

"I...you're..." She was seized by a memory. Her first steps on Syberia Island. A figure standing watch on a platform, but when she'd touched him, he'd fallen apart, dead on his feet for milennia. And she'd taken his medallion, which had showed her how to call the mammoths for Hans...

"Yes," said the man, smiling. "I am the Watcher. You have seen a great deal."

"Yes. And I want to tell everyone the wonderful things I've seen! The world is full of so much, and I'm bursting to tell them!"

"And if this story was known, what would it do for you?"

"It...it would make me feel like I finished this quest," Kate explained. "It'd help me explain myself to the people who don't understand."

"And you will maybe live very well out of it."

Suddenly the figure across from Kate wasn't the old Watcher. It was herself, clad in the cold-weather furs and goggles she'd acquired in her travels, and holding the mammoth doll in her lap. "Is this who you are, truly, or are you this?"

She was still sitting across from herself, but now she was wearing her very best suit from the law firm. Except it wasn't her best suit. It was better! It was silk and had a diamond tie pin.

"You...you think I want to make money out of this story?"

"Do you?" said her reflection. "After all, your old life would understand that. They'd probably get a cruise out here. Mr. Marson would be put in his place. Mom would be proud of you. Maybe Dan and Olivia would even come back to you, once you'd shown them all what you were capable of!"

The spinning in Kate's head increased, and her stomach churned with horrified self-realization. "Oh, no. Oh, no! I...I didn't mean..." Her vision of herself suddenly blurred out. "No! No, it's not like that. I want to live, I want to make a living! But I don't want to turn into that! I don't want to show up Marson or Dan or Mum. I'm not that kind of person, not anymore! This adventure, it changed me! But...but I'm scared that I can't change enough. I still treated the Youkols, Hans, everyone else like resources, or characters in a story! I thought...I don't know what I thought, but I don't know if I can follow this path all the way." She buried her face in her hands, "I have no right to tell Hans' story, or the Youkols'! I'll just destroy it!"

Suddenly she felt a hand on her face, taking her chin and raising her eyes. Her opposite self in her cold-weather furs was back. "The only thing you're destroying is yourself, Kate. Do you think that if you were still that person, you could have done what you did?"

Her double changed again, this time into Boris, and said, in his voice, "Would just anyone have given me a chance to see the stars?"

Then it was Helena Romanski, the old opera singer, "Or given me my voice back, one last time?"

"Or brought me all the way to Syberia?"

Hans, small and wizened, now sat across from her, and Kate's eyes brimmed with tears.

Kate looked at Hans, "But...but it isn't about me, not really."

"It means you found my story," said Hans, "But this story is yours, too. Look at what you've done. Look at what you've seen. Is this not a great story?"

"You know the Youkols' story, some of it," said the Watcher, back in his original form, sitting across from her. "But they're not finished telling it to you. If you tell it when it isn't ready, then yes, people like the ones you've overcome will threaten it all. You have your story is about you, and what you did for Hans, and you can tell it. The Youkols' stories will wait for another time."

"I haven't earned the right to tell them," Kate said, nodding.

"Not yet," said the Watcher. "But the day may come. There is much for the Youkols to rediscover as well. Some of it is great, and some is terrible and you've proven you can be a great ally in this. And in the meantime, you know now, there is a whole world."

Kate felt hope swell up in her, and she said, "Is...is that alright, if I do that?"

"Your story is of restoring hope and saving lives. Such a story untold would be a terrible loss. You are as free as you ever were. More than ever! But the Youkols want you as an ally, if you will accept the rules they have for you. Wherever you go, keep this place in your heart." The Watcher gestured at Syberia, "Always follow dreams, Kate Walker. Choose your stories well."

Kate blinked away her tears. Where the Watcher had been, a harfang owl stood, looking at her with its amber glower. It spread its wings, and took flight right at Kate with a hoot.


	16. Spirits and Allies

Kate jolted awake to the sound of a deafening crash echoing around the cave. The burner had guttered out and the air was full of smoky haze. Kate blinked tears from her eyes. She wasn't sure how long she'd been sitting there, but her knees ached and her thighs and feet were numb and tingling. She virtually had to uncross her legs with her hands, which were ice cold as well. In so doing she realized she had hold of something: the prayer wheel that called a harfang owl. She pocketed it and staggered to her feet and toward the mouth of the cave, hands shoved into her pockets.

A sight of carnage waited for her. The dam floodgate upstream had been smashed to pieces. Chunks of wooden planks and gear wheels lay strewn along the banks. And a big, ponderous barge had run aground almost right outside the cave mouth!

And on its deck, up above Kate's head, Sergei Borodin stood, one foot on the gunwale, his assault rifle pointing down at her. "We have you now, Kate Walker! You and your hag companion!" Beside him, the dishevelled-looking Patriarch appeared, grinning horribly. Next to him, Kate was startled to recognize the bird-watching monk, who looked nervous and exhausted.

"What...what do you want, Borodin? What can I possibly give you?"

"Revenge!" Borodin cried, "You stole my dream from me!"

"Your dream was to hold an innocent old woman prisoner!"

"You come into a land that was not yours, and interfere in God's business," the Patriarch snarled. "You will pay now and hereafter! And the heathen Youkols will be cleansed from God's Earth!"

Kate glanced over her shoulder. The Spirit Woman had come up behind her. Kate shouted, "No! Get back! Stay away!"

The Spirit Woman sprang backward with considerable grace for someone her age. There was a gunshot that made Kate's ears ring. She felt flecks of stone graze her cheek, and Youki started barking down the tunnel.

Kate's heart leaped in fear, and she reflexively raised her hands. "Wait, no! Don't hurt them! I'm the one who crossed you!"

"Your sacrifice is unworthy," the Patriarch said bitterly. "And it will not avail you! We have the power of God on our side!"

For Kate, things slowed down. She'd raised her hands, but did not releas the thing she was grasping. She didn't know why she thought this would work, but suddenly she was very sure, like she'd hit upon the answer to a difficult problem after a good night's sleep. Taking great care, she worked the little metal hoop the prayer wheel hung from over her ring finger. Then, at last, let her hand open, so it swung loosely from her hand. "There are other powers, and I'm on their side," she said softly. And with her thumb, she spun it round. The eerie hooting of a harfang puffed out of it.

Then everything sped up again. There was a brief answer hoot from over Kate's head. Then Borodin's masked face was abruptly hidden by a berserk cloud of white feathers. Borodin screamed and dropped his rifle, sending it clattering onto the ground outside the cave. The Patriarch recoiled in alarm as the owl savaged Borodin.

Kate shouted down the passage, "Come on! Let's go!"

The Spirit Woman appeared at the cave entrance, grinning manically and carrying Kate's box. Youki stayed between her and the men on the boat, and they sprinted back toward Valadilene.

As they reached the little landing with its benches, Kate half-falling down the stairs, Boris and Emeliov came up toward them, Emeliov drawing his revolver.

"Kate," Boris yelled, "what the..."

A crackle of gunfire made them all duck, and ripped up pine branches scattered across the paving stones. Kate turned to see the Patriarch standing near the top of the stairs above the waterfall, the rifle in hand. Blue birds, flushed from the trees by his gunfire flew crazily up around him.

"You are vanquished, Kate Walker," the Patriarch crowed, "That Borodin was a useful tool, but I am right with the Almighty and you will not tell the world of a heathen stain on..."

Whatever else he was going to rave about was cut off abruptly when his face contorted in panic, and he pitched forward and shrieked as he plunged over the waterfall.

Kate dashed to the railing. Below, a foaming pool of water roiled and overflowed downstream, where the river was suddenly swollen and flowing fast after the demolition of the dam. There was no sign of the Patriarch.

Kate looked up where the birdwatching monk was standing where his Patriarch had done, staring goggle-eyed at what he'd just done. Over the roar of the water, she heard him shout, "He hurt the blue warblers!" Then he glanced at Kate, who, nonplussed, nodded her thanks. He nodded back, crossed himself, and vanished into the woods.

Kate stood, shakily, and looked at the others, "We...we did it. Let's..." But even if she'd known what to say at that moment, she sank to her knees and things started going dark. She came back to herself momentarily, feeling the others carrying her along. She saw the Spirit Woman smiling at her.

"Spirit Woman," Kate slurred, "I...keep meaning to ask: what's your name?"

"Soon you shall learn, Kate Walker."


	17. Valadilene

Kate woke up in a big, soft, warm bed. She opened her eyes to see the wood-panelled hotel room from Valadilene. She had another moment of forgetting whether this was now or months ago. Was it time to go to the Voralberg factory? Then she remembered, and sat up abruptly.

Just then, a knock came at the door. Kate got out of bed, realizing with some chagrin that she was in her canvas slacks and undershirt. Her suitcase was on the chair in the corner. She went to the wardrobe and found a bathrobe, pulled it on, and went to the door.

"Miss Walker," a stout, bearded man, the manager of the hotel. "Welcome back!" He held up a tray laden with food, "Croissant, brioche, jam and coffee. You've been asleep since yesterday morning. We've been very anxious."

"We?"

"Your friends, and that barbarian," the man said uncomfortably, "they're having breakfast downstairs."

"She's not a barbarian," Kate said, a little stiffly. "She's a healer from the Arctic. She's very kind and knowledgeable." But she looked at the food and her stomach seemed about to implode. "Thank you very much for this. Can you please tell my friends I'm awake and will be down in a little while?"

"Mr. Charnov said there is no hurry, and take all the time you need. He's going into town negotiating for supplies, he said."

"Thank you." Kate took the tray and went back inside, where, with privacy, she wolfed down the buttery, sweet pastries. The brioche was filled with chocolate. Kate couldn't remember the last time she'd had chocolate! The croissants came with strawberry jam and the coffee was, she thought, Ethiopian, strong and delicious.

After she'd finished eating, she headed for the bathroom. She realized she hadn't had a change of clothes in, quite possibly, weeks, and her shirt, as she pulled it over her head, stank unspeakably. The shower was the most exquisite relief imaginable, and she lingered there for nearly an hour, filling the bathroom with steam.

Finally, clean, fed and in fresh clothes, she found her way down to the hotel common room. Col. Emeliov was sitting with the Spirit Woman by the fire, apparently sharing tea. It was an appealingly quirky sight as she said something that made Emeliov nod and chortly gently. They both turned as one as Kate approached.

"Miss Walker," Emeliov said warmly. "Good. You are looking much better."

"How are you, Colonel?"

"Sore but well, thank you."

"Kate, you're up," cried Boris, entering the hotel.

"Boris," Kate said, smiling. "Is everything alright?"

"Well, the local constabulary aren't too thrilled about our parking job, but considering we had a serious crime to report, they've got other things to do."

"What's happened?"

"Well, they pulled the Patriarch out of the river," Boris said, wincing. "Nothing much to be done about that. They haven't been able to find the other monk, but last I heard Borodin's handcuffed to a hospital bed. We gave a statement about it, but you were out cold."

Kate nodded once, "Then that's done. Thank goodness."

"I think we'd better get flying soonest," Boris said, "I've stocked up on food, fuel, oil, that kind of thing. The airship's ready to fly as soon as we decide where we're going."

"Barrockstadt first, then, I think I'd like to go back to that lodge outside Romansburg for a while. If nothing else, I'll have a lot of work to do. With your help, if you're willing, I thought it might be nice to fix that old house up. I can get some money through the bank here."

"I think that can be arranged," Emeliov said. "My little shop will seem like a vacation after this. But it has been glorious to fight one last campaign."

"I can't thank either of you enough." Kate said, "Look, if this book agreement succeeds, I think you're both owed a percentage. I don't imagine it will be much, the University will want its cut, and I don't think it'll be a living for all of us."

"I'm not one to rest on my laurels," Boris said. "I can set myself up as a tinker in Romansborg with my fellow Colonel's help."

"Much appreciated, Miss Walker," Emeliov said, toasting her with his teacup. "You do us a great honour, but please do not take too much trouble over us. Besides, through your book, we may find immortality."

"You can consider it my salary," Boris said.

"Salary for what?" Kate asked, cocking her head.

"Being your mechanic. I'm not much for piloting blimps, but I can teach you how to operate it. Airship's a useful thing to have, next time you want to go on some other adventure, eh?"

Kate grinned at the thought.

"Youkols have no use for paper treasure," shrugged the Spirit Woman dismissively. "But it will help Kate Walker."

Kate felt abashed by their humility, and nodded.

Then the Spirit Woman said, "One other place we must go: to Youkol village. Kate Walker has passed through Tunnel of Dreams. It is a time for celebration."

"I don't have to fast again, do I?" Kate asked apologetically.

"No, Kate Walker," the Spirit Woman laughed. "But some little discomfort."

"I can't wait."


	18. Initiation

Even with spring well underway, the Youkol village still had the dry chill of a cellar, but the cool air was comforting to Kate as she flexed her sore fingers and wrists. She was sitting in the bedroom she'd stayed in as the Youkols' guest in the past, and the Spirit Woman and two young Youkol girls were there with her, and had been almost all day.

The Spirit Woman was putting away her tools as one girl unbandaged Kate's hands.

She'd wondered many times through the painful process whether this was a good idea, but now she was breathtaken.

Red and raw as they were, Kate's hands had been tattooed beautifully. The middle and fourth finger on each hand looked like she was wearing an ornate ring on each one, and her wrists had bands of fine patterns around them.

"They're beautiful. I wish I knew what they all meant."

"You will learn. I will teach you tonight." 

"Thank you." Kate breathed in the smell of cooking meat and herbs from outside. "I'm guessing it's time to eat?"

The Spirit Woman chuckled, "Yes indeed. You are a Youkol now, Kate Walker. Time to celebrate."

Kate followed the diminuitive woman back into the main...hall? Courtyard? As the two girls got ahead of them, she said, "Kate Walker?"

"Yes?"

"My name is Ayawaska."

The raised train platform Hans and the Youkols had raised was now a common area. On and around the platform, people sat on rugs and the skins of caribou, seals and bears, sharing out food - mostly meat and fish with stewed fruit and seaweed.

Kate sat with the Youkol Chief and Spirit Woman Ayawaska up on the platform. She was digging into something she thought was a kind of game bird when Boris, Emeliov, Igor Bourgoff and Malka came in, walking down the old tracks.

"You're back," Kate exclaimed.

"Yes," said Emeliov. "One last load of parts from the train to go. Given another few weeks, we'll have pulled up the tracks all the way back to the chalet. The Youkols will be safely cut off again."

Kate nodded, smiling sadly. At the entrance to the village, she could just make out the skeleton of the clockwork train where Boris had been dismantling it. The Youkols, meanwhile, looked rather relieved.

"When we were in Romansbourg, you had a letter from the University."

She took the papers Emeliov handed over. Her eyes lit up, "It's the contract for the book. They got the first draft then! This is an excellent deal, considering!"

"Good news?" The Chief asked.

"Very," Kate said, with satisfaction.

"I, uh, I read that draft you sent back to the University," Boris admitted. "It really tells the story of you and Hans' journeys and the Voralbergs, and the history of the places you went through, and the people you met. But the story's kind of vague about this end, especially that," he pointed at the Youkol Ark, docked again at the far end of the cavern, where Youkol craftsmen were going over it with feverish energy. "It talks about the frozen mammoths and tusks here, but not...well, not Syberia. It just retells the legends, the prehistory and stuff that you read in that old monk's book and Pons told you."

"Yes," Kate agreed, "Those parts aren't my story to tell. Maybe someday, but not yet." She looked thoughtfully at the tattoos on her fingers and wrists. "And I have your permission to exhibit some of the artefacts I've used?" She addressed Ayawaska and the Chief. "Not all, naturally," she gestured at the stone medallion, which Ayawaska currently had on her belt.

"All part of your story, Kate Walker," Ayawaska agreed.

"Which reminds me," Emeliov added, "Cirkos says he'd be happy to manage the exhibit tour."

"Igor and I will manage the bar while he's away," Malka said proudly. Igor grinned, equally proudly.

"That's marvelous! Thank you very much!"

This seemed to remind Ayawaska of something, and she started fumbling in a pocket. "One more thing for you, Kate Walker." She handed Kate something hanging on a leather thong. Kate frowned. It was a little piece of metalwork, irregularly round, with tiny cogs, and a keyhole in the shape of a cross. When she recognized the Voralberg keyhole, she realized the overall shape: a heart.

"Is it...is this Oscar's heart?"

"Open to Hans, open like yours, Kate Walker," the Chief agreed, nodding.

Kate slowly put it on around her neck, and sighed, her own heart glowing. "Thank you. Thank you all." Then she whispered, "Stay close Oscar. We've got a lot of places to go!"

 _Author's Note: this is the one rare instance where I synthesized in the some plot elements from Syberia 3 - Oscar's heart hanging round Kate's neck and the Spirit Woman's name come from there._


	19. Epilogue

_To Kate Walker_

 _c/o Romansbourg General Store_

 _Romansbourg_

 _Krasnoyarsk Krai_

 _Russian Federation_

 _660_

 _Dear Miss Walker,_

 _I've recently been reading your book, "Down the Tunnel of Dreams," about the history of the Voralberg family and your exploits in Russia, and I wished to express how impressed, fascinated and gratified I am by your successes and remarkable discoveries._

 _I am myself an adventuress by trade. There is a great deal that you saw and documented, and I'd be extremely interested in sponsoring further explorations. I believe a woman of your skill, bravery and intelligence could potentially find out a great deal more worth knowing in the Arctic. I may also have some other lines of inquiry that match up with your interests, and can provide training, equipment and backing if we can agree on a plan to pursue them._

 _I'm happy to invite you to visit my estate and discuss the matter further. Please contact me and we can arrange for your company._

 _I Remain_

 _Yours Most Sincerely,_

 _The Right Honourable Lara Croft_

 _Countess of Abbingdon_

 _Croft Manor_

 _Abbingdon-on-Thames_

 _Oxfordshire, England_

 _OX14 1JB_

 _Author's Note: Lara Croft is, of course, the main character of the Tomb Raider franchise. My first impression of Syberia is that was Tomb Raider without the violence._


End file.
